Any day ending in a "y". 
At what point does piracy become the moral thing to do?
- Thread starter Tkumpathenurple
- Start date
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
I don't think we'll even be able to possess new types of media in the medium term, not in any legal way. Corporations found it to be more profitable if we only consume media and never own it.
With Netflix and Disney+ we never own anything, nor with Spotify. We just need to keep paying them money if we ever want to listen to the same music / watch the same movie twice.
Same goes with games if people start to only follow the PS Plus / Gamepass path.
This is good enough if we mostly just consume new stuff, and for series / movies / games that seems to be the case for most people anyways.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Better to say that we, as consumers, chose the medium we prefer. And that medium is not physical media.
Consumers prefer convenience. Even if it's more expensive, convenience usually wins out. However, when combined with lower overall cost (like streaming services) to view or consume something, non-physical media is vastly preferred by your average 1st world consumer over the inconvenience of owning something.
The only way that changes is if non-physical distribution media somehow becomes not only less convenient but also significantly more expensive than physical media. This could happen if the internet went to shite in every country, for example.
Consumers moving to digital media isn't because corporations are somehow forcing them to do it, but because it's more convenient and often cheaper in the long run.
Even if I lost access to my entire Steam library, I won't suddenly want to start owning physical versions of games again. I'll just seek out another digital storefront. Pretty much everyone I know in RL is like that as well. No-one I personally know actually wants to own a movie, song, game, or book on physical media outside of rare collectors items that represent nostalgia from their childhood (like JRR Tolkien books for me, or NES carts for a close friend of mine). However, outside of displaying them in a case, we never actually touch or use them.
This isn't to say that there aren't people that value physical ownership over digital convenience, but those that prefer physical media are in a constantly shrinking minority.
Regards,
SB
Consumers prefer convenience. Even if it's more expensive, convenience usually wins out. However, when combined with lower overall cost (like streaming services) to view or consume something, non-physical media is vastly preferred by your average 1st world consumer over the inconvenience of owning something.
The only way that changes is if non-physical distribution media somehow becomes not only less convenient but also significantly more expensive than physical media. This could happen if the internet went to shite in every country, for example.
Consumers moving to digital media isn't because corporations are somehow forcing them to do it, but because it's more convenient and often cheaper in the long run.
Even if I lost access to my entire Steam library, I won't suddenly want to start owning physical versions of games again. I'll just seek out another digital storefront. Pretty much everyone I know in RL is like that as well. No-one I personally know actually wants to own a movie, song, game, or book on physical media outside of rare collectors items that represent nostalgia from their childhood (like JRR Tolkien books for me, or NES carts for a close friend of mine). However, outside of displaying them in a case, we never actually touch or use them.
This isn't to say that there aren't people that value physical ownership over digital convenience, but those that prefer physical media are in a constantly shrinking minority.
Regards,
SB
for some countries, digital is/was cheaper than physical too.
Games published by Sony on PSN Indonesia was almost consistently cheaper than physical, but they then stopped doing regional pricing, and its cheaper to buy a physical game from Region 2 (europe?)
fortunately Epic and Steam got a really nice regional pricing for Indonesia. Except for games from JP publishers.
btw turns out half-piracy is popular in Indonesia. Tons of people "selling" a 1 week access of their PSN account. basically to take advantage of how PSN license work (1 game license can be used on 2 PS4, 2 different account).
EDIT:
btw does this considered as piracy? https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021...me-20-years-after-it-was-canceled/?comments=1
Games published by Sony on PSN Indonesia was almost consistently cheaper than physical, but they then stopped doing regional pricing, and its cheaper to buy a physical game from Region 2 (europe?)
fortunately Epic and Steam got a really nice regional pricing for Indonesia. Except for games from JP publishers.
btw turns out half-piracy is popular in Indonesia. Tons of people "selling" a 1 week access of their PSN account. basically to take advantage of how PSN license work (1 game license can be used on 2 PS4, 2 different account).
EDIT:
btw does this considered as piracy? https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021...me-20-years-after-it-was-canceled/?comments=1
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Everyone I personally know with a gaming console wants to own their single-player games on physical media so they can resell or borrow their games to other people.
I just finished a NG+ run of Demon's Souls using a disc borrowed from a friend, and I just borrowed my copy of Sackboy to a second friend, who is going to borrow me his copy of Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
It has nothing to do with attributing more sentimental value to a physical copy. Physical copies really do have more value to us, by far.
We're all on a 1Gbit/s internet connection and for us it's a lot faster to download a game than to transfer the data from the disc.
Wit an internet tat fast, isnt borrowing psn accounts is much easier, simpler, faster? Bonus point, 2 people can use 1 game at the same time
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yes, there are people like this still. I acknowledged that. However, the point is that it's an increasingly shrinking minority. We can see this as storefronts that cater to people that want physical version of media continue to go out of business. The only way most of the remaining ones can still remain in business if they can somehow leverage digital sales of games. However, as that typically means just selling codes for digital games that are redeemed on other digital storefronts, these stores become increasingly irrelevant to the vast majority of 1st world gamers.
Even just having an online storefront that sells physical copies of media isn't enough to keep most stores in business. If Amazon still only sold physical books, for example, it's quite likely they would have gone out of business over a decade ago. If they sold books, video and music, they likely would have stayed around a little longer, but would have gone out of business years ago as well, like Hastings (a relatively popular Books, Music and Video chain in the US for decades) did.
GameStop is a prime example of a once unstoppable gaming sales juggernaut that rode the desire of gamers to buy used games. But as the desire for physical game ownership dies (new and used), so does the corporation.
This has nothing to do with corporations forcing digital onto consumers. This is all about consumers forcing media corporations to offer digital goods.
If a media corporation wants to stay in business, it has to offer digital goods.
Regards,
SB
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D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
No, we also play coop MP games together as well. And we also play games with our wives and kids using our accounts. Plus we want to be able to use our cloud saves in our accounts.
There are very few games-only stores in Euroland. We mostly buy our games at big electronics + multimedia stores like Mediamarkt or FNAC, or big department e-/stores like Amazon.
I don't think any of them is going to disappear anytime soon, and considering how most of the consoles being sold here are the disc versions, I'm guessing they're not going away anytime soon.
Maybe what you're talking about is a reality in the US which has a higher degree of consumerism, but I don't think that's true at all for most of the European market.
With account sharing, you can play coop mp games together with just 1 game license. The 2 people sharing 2 game license still use their own accounts to play, and cloud saves also work as usual.
It does bring issue if you share it to more than 2 accounts tho. In your case, sharing the game to your wive, your friend wive, your kids, your friends kids' accounts.
Only 1 PS4 will be able to do that. While the other 1 PS4 is forced to only use 1 account.
Edit:
Assuming only 1 account shared. If you exchange each other's accounts, then 2 PS4 can play each counterparts games with any accounts.
Basically
ACCOUNT.B set PS4.A as primary. ACCOUNT.A set PS4.B as primary.
Now any accounts on PS4.A will be able to play all games that was purchased by account.B
any accounts on PS4.B will be able to play all games that was purchased by account.A
Only ACCOUNT.B able to play all games that was purchased by ACCOUNT.B on PS4.B and PS4.A
Only ACCOUNT.A able to play all games that was purchased by ACCOUNT.A on PS4.B and PS4.A
Cloud save, multiplayer competitive and coop at the same time with the same game, played with just 1 game purchased by 1 account works across multiple accounts on both PS4
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D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Not all of them. I'm playing Division 2 with one of my friends and I'm pretty sure we each need our copy of the game.
Regardless, we only get physical single-player games. And yes, we do share it over more than 2 people.
Maybe the account that purchased the division 2 hadn't set the PS4 that didn't have division 2 license as primary PS4.
But yeah, for your case, a disc is simpler. Otherwise you would need to keep passing off the "primary PS4" back and forth depending which account got the license, etc. Basically a headache.
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